


They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm

by comtessedebussy



Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autoerotic Asphyxiation, BDSM, Impact Play, Knifeplay, M/M, Possessive Behavior, Syndicate!Ethan, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-13 19:52:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17494238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comtessedebussy/pseuds/comtessedebussy
Summary: After Ethan infiltrates the Syndicate, he emerges a darker man. But Benji has never been anything less than his perfect match, and their relationship has never been conventional.





	They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is the story I've been dying to write with a darker, more possessive Ethan, of which I don't think there's nearly enough in canon or fic. Ethan's relationship with Benji is not necessarily the healthiest one, and you probably shouldn't try at home (most of) the kinky activities they engage in. 
> 
> The title is from a Dorothy Parker poem titled "Fair Weather," which seems to summarize Ethan and Benji perfectly.

They’ve spent time apart before due to missions, but Ethan’s disappearance and six-month radio silence is unprecedented. It is broken only by a brief message embedded on a dot-sized device hidden in a postcard from some ridiculously sunny locale.

The IMF may be in a state of limbo, and he may be getting put through lie detector tests every week, but he still has a job to do, especially if Ethan’s out there, risking his life. So he dutifully takes the intel to Brandt – the only person he knows he can trust –but first, he traces where it came from. Which is a hell of a job, because Ethan is good, but Benji’s better when it comes to anything tech-related.

Which is how he finds himself following a tracker down a dark alleyway in London. When two thugs peel away from the shadows to ambush him, he dispatches them easily – he’s made it a point to stay sharp, even while on desk duty, should Ethan ever need him. It’s only when the second body thuds to the ground that he feels a needle prick his neck, and barely has time to swear before the world tilts sideways and turns black.

 

“Hello, Benji.”

Benji blinks his eyes open, then blinks several more times before the world swims into view.

“ _Ethan?”_

“In the flesh,” Ethan confirms. He looks good: fit, healthy, unhurt. Calm and in command of the situation, as always, and for a second, Benji breathes a sigh of relief. That is, until he tries to move, and his memories come flooding back at the same moment that he realizes he’s tied to a chair. Glancing around, he notes that his surroundings make up a nondescript stone room. He could be anywhere. A red light blinks on the wall in front of him, telling him they’re not alone.

“Ethan, what’s going on?”

“Remember that Syndicate I told you about?” Ethan asks.  

Benji nods.

“Well, I joined them.” Ethan doesn’t sound particularly proud. Just – matter-of-fact.

 “You _joined_ them? Come off it, Ethan, you expect me to believe that _you_ turned?”

Ethan raises an eyebrow. “I seem to recall you pointing out just what I was capable of. I decided to give that some consideration.”

Benji remembers it well, though right now it seems like a lifetime away, stolen moments of love and light that are as far from this dark cell as they are from the closest start.

_“You know,” Benji muses as he runs his fingers gently over Ethan’s knuckles, “you’ve never frightened me.”_

_They’re lying in bed, a rare few hours they have to themselves, with the soft morning sunlight of early spring falling through the curtains. It’s ridiculously beautiful, and only feels real because they are both keenly aware of how fleeting it is. Perhaps it is what makes Benji so sentimental._

_Ethan looks up at him, his gaze equal parts concern and confusion. “I should hope not,” he says._

_“I just mean –well, the things you’re capable of if you put your mind to them… ” He traces his fingers over Ethan’s skin as he talks, relishing the strength he knows lies hidden inside. Every time he’s with Ethan, he’s struck by the sheer unstoppable forces hidden within this man, lying at bay until they’re called upon. “If you weren’t one of the good guys, I’d be terrified of what you might be capable of. In fact, the higher ups probably stay up at night worrying about what would happen if you decided to turn. But you’ve never given me cause to fear.”_

_“And I hope I never do,” Ethan confesses. “I never want you to be frightened of me.”_

_His hand rests atop Benji’s, thumb brushing over the bruise he’d left on Benji’s wrist as he pinned him down during lovemaking the previous night. Benji had practically lost his mind with pleasure and need as he’d struggled to touch himself and been prevented from it by Ethan’s iron grip. Ethan always seemed to know how to bring him to the edge, to give him what he didn’t even realize he wanted._

_“I don’t think I ever could be,” Benji admits._

_They meet in a soft kiss, and Benji stores away the memory of Ethan’s lips for however long they’ll be separated come next mission._

“You know what I decided, Benji?” Ethan drawls, jarring him out of the memory, and Benji realizes that he doesn’t sound quite like Ethan. There’s something lacing his voice, like a poison barely detectable beneath the taste of a luscious drink. 

“What’s that?”

“That my talents were much better appreciated elsewhere. And since you know _exactly_ what those talents are, I’m sure you’ll see that the most reasonable thing you can possibly do is tell me how you found us.”

Benji remains silent.

Ethan sighs dramatically. Benji thinks it’s a little overwrought, quite honestly, but then again, he knows Ethan’s expressions like the back of his hand. It’s still disconcerting, like he’s landed in one of those alternate realities theorized by quantum physicists, so similar to one’s own as to be practically indistinguishable. It’s his Ethan, with a hair’s breadth of difference.

“ _Benji,_ ” Ethan says, somehow both sweet and menacing. “You know you’re going to talk. It’s just a matter of how long it takes.”

“You know I’ve been trained for this.”

Ethan flashes his trademark grin. “So have I. Makes me pretty good at working around that training.”

Ethan kneels down by him, spreads his legs so that he’s entirely in Benji’s space, their faces mere inches from each other, eye to eye. It’s not the soft, kind gaze Benji is used to. It has its familiar ferocity, but it is dark, its full force turned on an objective other than saving the world. For a second, it becomes crystal clear to Benji just how frightened he should be.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Benji,” Ethan says with the sweetness of poisoned honey. “So why don’t you just tell me?”

Benji meets Ethan’s gaze. He knows what Ethan is capable of.

“Make me,” he says.

Ethan hums as he begins unbuttoning Benji’s shirt, his fingers nimble as always. Benji can practically feel the heat radiating off Ethan’s body – that man is always like a furnace, burning, _alive_ – and it’s welcome in the cold of this dark dungeon. He wills his body not to respond with desire to those hands undressing them, because wouldn’t that be awkward?  But it’s Ethan, here, close to him, touching him, his presence so longed for after so many months of absence, and Benji can barely help himself.

Ethan’s face is blank as he expertly applies electrodes to Benji’s now-bare skin. He is meticulous: they aren’t too close to his heart, such that the current won’t send him into cardiac arrest. He takes his time, seeming perfectly at ease, as if he’s doing nothing more serious than slicing bread in their shared kitchen, a lively glint in his eye. Each brush of his fingers across Benji’s skin is like an electric charge of its own. Ethan needs nothing more than his hands to send electric shocks through him, Benji thinks.

He suddenly realizes how glad he is that it’s Ethan doing this. The worst part of being tortured, he has found, is not the pain, but the uncertainty of it, the dread about what comes next, whether he’ll live to see another day or die alone and forgotten, far from anyone who cares for him. If the torture goes long enough, that dread is usually followed by the wish for death, for release. And if it were any of Lane’s cronies, survival would be far from a certainty, through either their carelessness or their cruelty. But with Ethan, he is safe. He will live through this.

“Last chance,” Ethan warns.

“No.”  

Ethan turns up the dial, sending an electric current through his body, and Benji screams. He hadn’t lied: he’s been trained for this, mental training for surviving the pain, the uncertainty, the fear. But none of it makes it hurt less.

He screams until his throat is hoarse and the world has grown hazy. His very blood feels like it’s on fire, and all he can do is wait. It will end, he knows. But he does not know when, and it is becoming harder and harder to wait for the moment of his salvation.

Ethan places a hand on his shoulder. His touch has always given Benji strength, and now, under the guise of a torturer’s warped caress, it reassures him that they will survive this, together.

“Benji, Benji, _Benji,”_ Ethan chastises him in mock frustration.

All Benji can do is sob weakly. Ethan removes his hand, and he feels suddenly cold, even as every inch of him feels as if it’s on fire. He doesn’t see Ethan turn up the dial again, only feels the current run through his body again.

 “Ethan. Ethan, _please,_ ” Benji begs during a rare pause. “I can’t, _please._ ” It is easier to let himself beg when it is Ethan hurting him; he has no fear of showing weakness to this particular torturer.  

Ethan kneels down by him and smiles a wicked smile. His hands settle again on Benji’s shoulders, and Benji leeches the warmth from them while he can. The red light still blinks, somewhere behind Ethan’s head, and Benji feels a momentary satisfaction at the knowledge of how predatory these caresses must seem to whoever watches them.

 “You know how to make me stop, Benji,” Ethan coos, in that sweet lover’s voice, but again it’s laced with poison. His fingers gently trace over the burns starting to make themselves visible on Benji’s torso.

Too weak to speak, Benji just shakes his head.

Ethan’s just getting back to turning up the dial when Benji hears the staccato sound of heels as an elegant woman saunters in, clad entirely in black.

“So, how is he?” she coos, threading her own fingers through Benji’s hair to tilt his head back. Her nails are sharp, and he rather thinks it’s like having a cat attempt to caress you with its claws.

“Recalcitrant,” Ethan says.

“Hmm.” Her talons rake down Benji’s skin, leaving scratches where it’s already sensitive. “Well, you seem like you’re having such _fun_ playing with him.” She plucks wistfully at an electrode.

“And you’d like to take over, I suppose?” Ethan challenges.

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it. No, this one’s _all_ yours,” she drawls, her predatory touches unyielding and suddenly, Benji feels something icy-cold in his hand. He almost jumps out of his skin before realizing that it’s a knife that she’s pressing into his hand.

He stares at her, but she gives no indication that she’s noticed his gaze. She winks at Ethan before strutting out as she came in.

“Have fun,” she calls as she leaves.

Benji doesn’t know how much time passes before another voice rings out, or, rather, _slithers_ into the air between them.

“What’s the holdup?” It asks. Benji blinks a few times before the world swims into focus enough to allow him to recognize a man that Ethan’s intelligence had identified as Solomon Lane. He reminds Benji of a reptile.

 “The holdup is that he has the same training as me,” Ethan points out.

Lane smiles, though it looks rather like a hyena baring its teeth. “We could never have broken _you,_ Ethan. We were very lucky you decided to see reason rather than die needlessly.”

“Yes, well. I can’t say he’ll do the same. He’s always had an overactive sense of loyalty.”

“Indeed. He is not _you._ So again, perhaps we might be able to speed matters up, yes?”

“He can’t talk if he’s dead, Lane. Or unconscious, for that matter. I told you, this is going to take time. Days.”

“You know perfectly well we don’t have days.”

“Yeah, well, tough shit,” Ethan says. “Life is disappointment.”

Lane sighs, but he doesn’t argue. Benji considers briefly that Lane seems to give an awful lot of credence to Ethan, though his mind doesn’t cooperate with that train of thought for more than a few seconds before it simply gives up. It’s a consideration for later, he thinks vaguely.

He takes advantage of the momentary distraction provided by Lane leaving – Ethan watches him as he walks out – to cut his bonds. It’s now or never, he realizes – even if there is a more opportune moment, he’s quickly weakening from the pain, and he’s never been able to win a fight against Ethan, even in top form. And Ethan cannot be discovered letting him win. All they have is the apparent element of surprise.

By the time Ethan turns back to him, Benji’s stumbled to his feet, wielding the knife. Ethan barely shows surprise, but his reaction is slower than what Benji is used to – he fails to avoid Benji’s knife, which opens a gash across his stomach.

In the second it takes Ethan to process the injury, Benji shoves him away before running for his life. There’s a guard outside the door, but he expects Benji even less than Ethan does, and it’s easy to stab him in the side before running for his life.

……

Benji’s never had much good sense, which is why, following his escape, he ends up in Casablanca, helping Ethan and Ilsa steal Syndicate intelligence from an underwater death trap. Ilsa Faust, as he discovers she is named, has been undercover with the Syndicate, just like Ethan. They’ve been secretly working together while overtly competing with each other; apparently, they’re so successful at this that Lane has, on more than one occasion, suggested that they get a room. When Benji had been captured, they’d arranged for his escape together.

Ethan corners him the second he sees him.

“I’m sorry I had to do that to you,” Ethan says. His eyes are dark and stormy with guilt.

“I’m glad it was you. It saved my life.”

“You wouldn’t have been in danger if you hadn’t followed the intel I sent you,” Ethan sounds frustrated, almost an edge of blame to his voice, and Benji wonders which of them he’s blaming. “I intended you to pass it on, not investigate it yourself.”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t going to sit at a desk while you _infiltrated the damn Syndicate,_ ” Benji snaps. “And that’s that. Besides, you made sure I was fine.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Ethan says, and practically rips Benji’s shirt off without waiting for his acquiescence. His eyes rove over Benji’s torso, the lingering burns still visible. Something dangerous flashes in Ethan’s eyes, furious and possessive at the same time. Then it’s gone, as quickly as it appeared.

“See? Fine, thanks to you,” Benji insists.

Ethan’s expression is unreadable.

“Besides, I had to hurt you too,” Benji adds, partly to fill the charged silence. “Are _you_ okay?” He reaches for Ethan’s shirt, and Ethan ever-so-patiently allows him to investigate the gash. It’s barely skin-deep.

They get the intel, and Ilsa “escapes” with it, leaving Ethan in the dust as she takes the information back to Atlee. Meanwhile, Ethan remains undercover with Lane, ready to enact whatever plan she communicates to him to lock him up once and for all.

Except that it all goes to hell. Atlee erases the data from the drive, while Lane somehow manages to discover Ethan’s true allegiance. Which is how Benji ends up strapped to a bomb, facing Ethan across a table and with Ilsa pointing a gun at him.

…..

“ _What did he do to you_?” Is the first thing Ethan asks the second they’re safe again.

The corners of his eyes flare in anger. It’s the only sign of it, really – with Ethan, the signs are always subtle. His training his cleansed him too thoroughly of the tendency to display his emotions. But Benji has learned to read the signs, like an archaeologist expertly reading the remains buried beneath layers.

“Nothing more than – “ he gestures, attempting to evoke the general sentiment of being covered in semtex while simultaneously trying to avoid having to actually say it.

 “ _No,_ ” Ethan says, that simple syllable so forceful that Benji at first thinks that it is that simple word that has slammed him against the wall before realizing that it is, in fact, Ethan’s arms that have done so. Ethan’s hands are on his wrists, holding him pinned, and Benji knows from prior experience that it’s useless to struggle. “I will make him pay for all he did to you,” Ethan swears.

“Ethan, Lane’s in a glass box,” Benji says with much more patience than he’s feeling. He’s much too tired right now to argue with Ethan Hunt’s stubbornness. “We got him. What exactly are you going to do to him?”

Ethan breathes sharply, and Benji knows he’d like nothing better than to rend Lane limb from limb. This is the man Ethan spent months working for, killing for, only to watch Lane nearly kill Benji in front of his eyes.

“You’re fucking mine,” Ethan practically snarls. “And nobody,  _nobody_ , lays a goddamn finger on you. Nobody except _me_. Especially not _him._ ”

Benji opens his mouth, but his brain is still searching for words, like a program that hasn’t compiled yet. He knows what this is. Ethan isn’t upset that somebody touched what’s _his,_ not really. He’s upset that somebody touched _Benji,_ and it’s _exhilarating._ It’s exactly what he needs right now.

But something seems to pull Ethan back. He bows his head, though he shows no signs of letting Benji go. “I’m sorry,” he says. “This is what Lane has made me.”

Benji doesn’t bother offering reassurances.

“What do you need?” he asks instead.

“I need to hurt you,” Ethan confesses. “To know that the only person who gets to leave a mark on you is _me._ ”

“Then do it,” Benji says softly.

Ethan raises his head to meet Benji’s eyes, and the same possessive glint flashes through Ethan’s eyes that Benji had seen in Casablanca. Ethan doesn’t bother with concerns about taking things too far. They both know exactly what Benji can endure.

“You need me to stop, you tell me to stop,” is all Ethan says on that subject.

Ethan undresses him rather unceremoniously, though frankly Benji’s rather happy to be rid of clothes that were just recently covered in explosive. He wonders for a few moments what, exactly, Ethan is going to do to him – they don’t have much in the hotel room that can be used for the purposes they have in mind – but Ethan makes do very simply and practically, taking off his belt.

He throws Benji facedown onto the bed, one hand at his neck. It’s a rather effective way of keeping him immobile as Ethan begins to thoroughly and methodically use the belt on every inch of his skin.

Benji doesn’t enjoy pain – certainly not when he’s being interrogated, and not in this context, either. But right now, he needs it. He had felt so _violated,_ when Lane took him – the syringe in his body, the hands on his skin, the lens in his very _eye._ But Ethan is washing every one of those touches away, marking him, reminding him Benji is _his._ And he can’t be Lane’s if he is Ethan’s. Those violations mean nothing when he is being so thoroughly claimed by another.

Ethan doesn’t pause to allow Benji to adjust to the pain. When Benji had done anything resembling this with prior partners – though it was light years distant from what they’re doing now, playful swats that ended in giggles – they had started gently, allowing for adjustment. But Ethan merely lays into the skin of his back with merciless strokes again and again, until Benji is crying out, and the fiery agony burns Lane’s touch from his skin.

“You’re _mine,_ ” Ethan reiterates, as if he had not yet made that clear. “Mine. Mine. _Mine,_ ” he repeats, like a mantra, like he can only believe it if he says it enough times.

Benji’s trembling now, his body furiously sending adrenaline coursing through him, his back on fire. He’s reaching that point where it’s becoming difficult to remain still under the onslaught, when he wants to squirm away from the blows, regular and unyielding, but Ethan’s hand is a very effective vise.

“Ethan, _please,_ I can’t – “

Ethan hardly pauses. “You know what to say to make me stop,” he says.  “Until then, you belong to _me._ ”

“Please, no more,” Benji whispers, careful to use every variation but the one word that would make Ethan actually stop.

Ethan only stops when Benji’s skin is so red and raw that another blow would draw blood. After that, he scoops Benji up and holds him close, as gentle as he had been brutal moments ago. He cards a hand through Benji’s hair as he tilts his head down to give him a kiss, long and slow and tender.

Benji’s eyes flutter closed. He feels completely at peace. There’s no Lane to worry about anymore, no psychopathic terrorist intent on destroying the world – for now, anyway. There’s no mission to prepare for, no impossible plan to put together, no database to hack. There will be a briefing sometime in the future, but for now, there isn’t a single worry pulling at him.

“You’re mine,” he hears Ethan murmur as he drifts off to sleep. “No one else will ever lay a hand on you.”

 

When Benji wakes the next morning, Ethan is still holding him, though he’s wearing decidedly less clothing, and both of them are under the covers. Benji snuggles back into a warm cocoon of blankets and his lover’s arms without bothering to remember that the world exists. It’s rather like waking up at an ungodly hour of the morning, then feeling the relief of realizing it’s a day off, and that he can return blissfully to many more hours of sleep. Ethan watches over him, and that’s all he needs to know as he drifts back off.

The nightmares will come, he knows. They always do. But not yet.

Some time later, he surfaces again to find Ethan smiling down at him. He looks happy and carefree, his smile almost boyish as messy hair falls into his face. Benji is hit with a pang of adoration as he reaches up to cup Ethan’s cheek and bring their lips together. The move aggravates already sore muscles, and he winces.

“Come on,” Ethan coaxes him. “A shower will help.”

Ethan stands behind him in the warm spray, gently massaging soap into his skin as the hot water loosens his muscles. They don’t talk about the previous night, but he feels Ethan’s hands gently trace what must be the marks left on his back.

Pressing himself back against Ethan, his suspicion is confirmed when he feels Ethan’s hardened cock.

“Like what you see?” he murmurs, tilting his head sideways. Ethan takes the offering, planting kisses in the crook of his neck.

“I do.” His thumbs brush over Benji’s nipples, twisting them as Benji’s body quickly gets on board with the events.

“Mmmm.” Benji submits himself to Ethan’s hands shamelessly, allows Ethan to push him gently towards the wall of the shower. Ethan continues to kiss his neck as Benji places his palms flat on the wall.

“Don’t move,” Ethan tells him, before ducking out of the shower. He reappears moments later with water-resistant lube. Benji doesn’t bother wondering about its existence.

Ethan takes him slowly against the slick wall of the shower, his touch gentle, his lips kissing every inch of Benji’s skin. When Benji orgasms, the pleasure turning his legs to jelly, but Ethan catches him, holds him up, plants another kiss on him before coaxing them out of the hot spray and helping Benji towel off.

“Ready to go?” Ethan asks when they’re dressed.

“Not quite yet,” Benji says, coming up to Ethan and tilting his head up for a kiss. Ethan takes his cue willingly, planting a lengthy, soft, and tender kiss on Benji’s lips.

“ _Now_ we can go,” Benji says, and Ethan chuckles.

……

Nobody is captured or tortured on the next mission, which is a welcome change, though Ethan does end up with his fair share of bullet grazes as he held off their pursuers while Benji uploaded the intel they’d been sent to retrieve. It had been a simple mission, which had hit a snag solely due to an overzealous patrol guard, which is how they’d found themselves sprinting and dodging bullets.

They return to the hotel that is currently serving as their safehouse and meet each other’s eyes gleefully as they shut the door behind themselves. They wait only to lock it before they jump each other, exchanging adrenaline-fueled kisses in between tearing each other’s clothes off. None of Ethan’s bullet grazes are serious enough to warrant attention – they’ve stopped bleeding, anyway – so both of them ignore them utterly as Ethan pushes him onto the bed.

Neither of them holds back. Ethan’s hand finds Benji’s throat and presses down as their lips meet in a kiss. It remains there as Ethan thrusts into him, and Benji feels, in the force of it, their shared joy being alive, again, against all odds. Ethan squeezes the air from Benji’s lungs, as if it is only by reminding Benji of his own mortality that Ethan can convince him that they survived once more, did the impossible and lived to tell the tale. Benji feels the familiar heaviness that comes with being strangled, a buzz in his ears that gets loud as the edges of the world fade. He lets himself fall into the shrinking of his own sensations, knowing that here, on the edge, he _lives._

Ethan is practically racing against the clock now, seeking his own orgasm before Benji loses consciousness at his hand. This is how they’ve always done it, a partnership with a countdown ticking, a deadline and a life on the line. It is pure ecstasy. Ethan lets go of him only after his own climax, and Benji’s world whites out, either from pleasure or oxygen deprivation or both, as he feels Ethan filling him and follows him over the edge.

When he comes to, Ethan is still atop him, focused and attentive despite the bliss that had just filled his features. It’s only when Benji blinks his eyes open that Ethan collapses beside him as Benji sucks in air and wills his heart to calm its beating. They lie in silence as their breathing evens out, grins plastered over both their faces. They’re not done yet tonight, not by a mile, but they’re in no hurry.

Several orgasms later, Benji lounges in the mess that their bed has become as Ethan fetches them both a drink of water. He toys with the knife that Ethan keeps in his boot, and which he has left on the bedside table at some point during his gradual undressing. He has always been drawn to it: it is slim and elegant, yet deadly and effective - much like Ethan himself.

“You like my knife?” Ethan asks, amused. As always, he’s appeared silently, like a cat.

“Yes, it’s – uh, nice,” Benji manages, handing it back to Ethan.

Something electric passes between their two gazes, a moment of recognition, of _knowing._

The next thing Benji knows, he’s pressed to the bed with Ethan atop him and a knife at his throat. His eyes are alight with that fierceness they get sometimes.

“Is this what you want?” he asks.

“Yes,” Benji manages.

“You want me to fuck you with a knife at your throat, Benji?” Ethan continues. “Knowing that if I lose control,” he presses the knife more forcefully against Benji’s skin, so that Benji can feel not just its icy cold but its sharpness, “you could die? And _you_ make me lose control, Benji.”

It’s a very practical statement – Ethan, careful as always, is making sure Benji knows exactly what he’s asking for. But it’s also really hot to hear Ethan talk so practically about fucking him, about the _danger_ involved in fucking him, and between the words and the knife itself, Benji’s arousal is practically banging at the door.

“You never lose control when my life is on the line,” Benji says. And it’s true. Ethan had held his breath for those agonizing three minutes, in an underwater death trap, because panic would have killed them both. He had put on the most impenetrable of masks as he tortured Benji, his own qualms invisible. Ethan wouldn’t lose control.

“Fuck, Benji,” Ethan breathes. He brings their lips together, the steel ice-cold between them as they kiss.  

Benji stays very, very still as Ethan traces over his body with the knife – not from fear, but so that in his stillness, he can feel every ounce of the delicate blade. Ethan draws its tip down into the hollow of his throat, follows a trail down his chest, presses the side of the icy blade against his nipples as Benji gasps.

Ethan smirks. His own face has a slight flush to it, his eyes alight with mirth and power. He enjoys this, Benji in his control, enthralled. Benji had known he would. He feels his cock hardening with every second. The tip of Ethan’s knife finds the delicate skin inside his thigh and toys with it; its point kisses the crease between thigh and torso.

“ _Ethan,_ ” Benji breathes, so very impatient.

“Stay very still,” Ethan orders him. Benji obeys, twining his hands around the headboard as he braces himself.

Ethan is only slightly gentler this time around, his attention focused on keeping the blade where it needs to be. Benji wants to thrust up, to spear himself on Ethan’s cock, to take _more,_ but every time, the sharp edge of the blade keeps him pressed against the bed. He aches and he _needs,_ which makes it better. Half-a-dozen times, he nearly throws caution to the wind, nearly thrusts into Ethan’s embrace. They had defied death multiple times tonight; surely after all that, he would not die in Ethan’s arms?

He lets go of the headboard to wrap his arms around Ethan, a halfway measure of sorts. The knife is still at his throat, but as they press their bodies against each other, it becomes less a weapon than something they cradle, together, between them. He knows his nails are leaving marks on Ethan’s skin, and the knife has probably nicked him by now. These are the hazards of their shared life.

Benji’s orgasms tears through him, and feels like it takes what remains of his brains along with it. He feels wrung out, no ounce of anything left in his body. His brain is still coming back online when Ethan withdraws, carefully setting the knife aside. Benji meets his eyes and they share the kind of mischievous glance that they reserve for after they’ve gotten away with breaking multiple international laws.

“Satisfied?” Ethan asks.

Benji just grunts, and can practically feel Ethan’s smirk radiating off of him.

Several minutes later, Ethan is still grinning as he leads them to the shower.

….

The next time Benji is captured, he finds himself laughing at his captors’ pathetic attempts at inducing fear. He has known true fear, seen the face of a man capable of making his blood run cold if he so wished.

His captors are not such men.

“You’re dead,” he tells them. “You’re all dead.”

This group is young, inexperienced. He can tell. They don’t bother with anything fancy or high tech. They have hammers and knives.

“It is you who are dead, my friend, if you do not talk,” they tell him. Benji is unfazed by the threat.  

“Ethan Hunt will find you, and he will kill you, because he doesn’t like people touching what’s his,” he tells them.

With Lane as now, the worst part of it wasn’t the bones they were shattering, the insides that they were twisting. No, what his blood curdled at was the violation of it.

But if he thought of it as _Ethan’s_ body then it was no so much a violation of his self, his being, but disrespect of an object belonging to Ethan. And Ethan, of course, would make it right; he would focus the entirety of his righteous fury to take his revenge on those who dared touch what was his. And he had learned, from extensive experience, just how dangerous Ethan could be if he made himself your enemy.

There’s still a mark left on his torso, an electrical burn from his torture at Ethan’s hand, and Benji looks at it rather than his torturer, and reminds himself that this body is Ethan’s, and doesn’t talk.

It doesn’t stop him from screaming as they slice him open and leave him in a pool of his own blood, but it does stop him from telling them about the leak in their organization that they’re so desperate to find.

It keeps his sanity inside him as his blood pools around him.

Ethan and the team find him only a few hours later, though by then his body is in a sorry state. True to Benji’s words, Ethan takes his fury out on the torturers. They’re low-level, part of a vaster organization they’ve been tracking, unlikely to have valuable intelligence, so Ethan doesn’t take particularly great pains to keep them alive.

They stumble out of his former prison, now littered with bodies. Ethan’s arms hold him up. Ethan doesn’t leave his bedside in the hospital, where Benji spends only one night before they release him. When they return home, there’s no question of doing anything strenuous. He can barely walk with his amount of bruises and broken bones, made even worse every time he jolts awake from a nightmare to feel a stab of pain slicing through him from the movement.

Ethan is a perfect gentleman throughout, alternating between comforting but thoroughly platonic touches and manhandling him into not aggravating his injuries. By the time Benji recovers, he’s practically itching for Ethan to lay a hand on him, in any and every way.

This time, they’re better prepared; they don’t have to make do anymore with what they find at hand. Ethan’s made several trips to an excellently-stocked store. Benji had refused to accompany him, insisting that it would rather defeat the point if he knew what Ethan was going to do to him.

Ethan hadn’t insisted.

“You’re _mine,_ ” Ethan reiterates, as he ties Benji down.

They don’t negotiate beyond the most cursory basics. They have a safeword, and up until then, Ethan marks him as his own, paints on the canvas of Benji’s body until he screams in pain, because it’s only then that the marks Ethan leaves feel deeper than the ones from the last interrogation he’s weathered.

Ethan uses a whip this time, an elegant thing that hisses through the air to kiss Benji’s back with its twisted caress. Ethan handles it expertly, until Benji’s back is in agony, afire and slick with blood, but he knows he can take this. He’s survived worse, much worse, at Ethan’s hand, even. He hates the pain, but he needs Ethan, not holding back for once in his life, his complete and unyielding control thrown to the winds as he takes his rage out onto Benji’s body.

“ _Mine,_ ” Ethan hisses, echoing the hiss of the whip through the air as they both write ownership onto Benji’s skin.

By the time Ethan is finished, Benji’s grip on reality is too tenuous to entirely comprehend Ethan undoing the knots that bind him. Ethan washes the blood off his back and disinfects each cut. His touches are gentle, yet each one sends pangs of pain through him and hazily, he thinks that perhaps Ethan is not finished with him tonight.

He passes out rather than falls asleep, pain and endorphins and drowsiness drawing him down into darkness.

 

Ethan wakes first, and finds that he has pulled Benji into an embrace while they slept. When Benji wakes, he smiles despite – or perhaps because of - the marks littering his body. They curl around Benji’s waist and torso as if the whip had tried to hold him close the way Ethan does now, stark red against his pale skin, and they send another surge of possessiveness through Ethan. Benji is _his._

Benji hand rests lightly atop Ethan’s, a thumb brushing over scarred knuckles. The movement sparks a memory from what seems like eons ago.

“Do I frighten you?” Ethan suddenly desperately needs to know.

Benji blinks up at him.

“You could never frighten me,” he says with heartrending simplicity.

“Even – after everything?” Ethan asks, letting the word hang in the air, as his fingers trace the scar of the burn he himself had left on Benji’s skin, almost imperceptible among the fresher, redder marks.

Benji’s hand settles atop Ethan’s to still it.

“You are my safe harbor,” Benji says softly. “You stand between me and the world, and you keep me safe from it. You are the last person in the world that I could fear.”

“You should know something.” Ethan says, sitting up and reluctantly letting Benji go. He doesn’t meet Benji’s eyes. “You said you were glad it was me who tortured you, instead of Lane’s men. When you were captured, and Lane decided he wanted it to be me who made you talk, I was glad. Not only because I could help you escape, but because it meant I got to be the only one to hurt you. And I _wanted_ to be the only one who got to do that.”

“Yes, I know,” Benji says simply. “And I told you, I’m glad it was you.”

Ethan’s head spins momentarily. When the world rights itself again, he kisses Benji to convince himself that he isn’t dreaming. As always, the kiss sucks him in, until he finds himself nudging Benji onto his back, still tender from the previous night, and feels him wince. But Benji offers no protests when Ethan pulls away to look down at him inquiringly; he seems content, in fact, to allow Ethan to push him into the mattress and kiss him once again.

This time, when Ethan pulls away, Benji smiles up at him expectantly.

“You are the bravest man I know, and the strongest,” Ethan says, awestruck.

Benji just smiles wider. “I know,” he says.


End file.
